Founders rarely leave behind a vacuum. They leave behind a particular set of arrangements — relationships, habits, decisions — that depended on them. Continuity is the work of replacing those arrangements before they need to be replaced.
Substituting institution for personality
Where the founder once decided, an institutional process must decide. Where the founder once relayed information informally, a documented channel must exist. None of this is glamorous, and most of it must be in place before anyone misses it.
The successor's mandate
A successor inherits a role, but they must be granted a mandate. The mandate — what they are authorised to change, what they are expected to preserve, and against what standard they will be measured — is rarely written down clearly, and is the source of most early disputes.
Memory as infrastructure
Institutional memory — why a particular customer is handled in a particular way, why a clause exists in a particular agreement — is infrastructure as much as any physical asset. Without deliberate capture, it depreciates faster than almost anything else on the balance sheet.